


Coda

by CapnShellhead



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Pining, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 22:10:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18647080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CapnShellhead/pseuds/CapnShellhead
Summary: Steve sends Tony off a second time.





	Coda

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short piece I wrote while working on the 3 other ideas I had leaving the theater. 
> 
> I kept thinking about who must've carried Tony home.
> 
> This is a short coda to his last scene in 2024.

After Sam and Bucky left, Steve headed out to the pier.

The others had gone inside so, there was no one left to see him. Steve was relieved; it would have been difficult to explain.

Carefully, he walked to the edge and sat down. It was harder moving now that he was older. Most days, he welcomed it: he’d never thought he’d know what it felt like to age. To look into a mirror and see lines, marks of the passage of time. He pulled off his shoes and lowered his feet into the cool water. The sun beamed down on him, warm as it had been on this day decades ago. Steve remembered hating the weather then. Now, he can’t remember why.

As he gazed out across the water, he found his voice. “Well, I did it. I took your advice.” A smile spread across his face, his words soft. “I know, I’m surprised, too.” He laughed quietly. “I suppose I shouldn’t be. Nobody ever managed to make me see things differently the way you did. Nobody ever seemed to understand me half as well as you did. Sometimes, I hated that about you.”

He clasped his hands together. “This is my second time sending you off. They built this pier in the 1980s, did you know that? Before you built this house. Some days, I’d come out here, sit in this spot and think of you.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “I’d sit just long enough to hear you telling me to stop brooding. Even now, I can hear your voice.”

His throat tightened and he took a deep breath, focusing on the trees along the edge. He found the words, “You told me not to waste my life. To make something of it. It was good advice,” he bit his lip. “I went back, Tony. To my time – my old time. I went back, I had my dance, I tried to steal a happy ending. It worked for a while. I was happy, in my own way. But, it wasn’t quite what I thought it would be. I’d spent so long believing this ending was all I needed to be happy. I thought, if I could just get back there and be who I was  _ meant _ to be, it would all just fall into place.”

He rested his hands on his knees, letting out a slow breath. “Peggy was the dream. She was beautiful and charismatic and she made me believe in myself. And she wanted me,” he whispered. “She was a vision on our wedding day, you should have seen her. We danced until we could hardly bear to stand. We were happy together. I know that we were.”

He averted his gaze. “But I kept thinking about you. About how good it felt just to see you again, to work with you. I watched you and Pepper and I saw how good you were with Morgan. I thought I wanted what you had.” His eyes warmed, chest tightening. “But now, I think I wanted you.”

His eyes spilled over, voice wavering. “The first time I held you in my arms, I was carrying you home to bury you. Thor offered but I had to do it. I couldn’t,” he covered his mouth, “even when that time came, I couldn’t let you go. I thought, if I just held on…” he broke off. “You gave me a home, Tony. You gave me somewhere to belong and I thought it was just a building and the team and the job, but it was you.”

“That last mission, even knowing how important it was, how small the margin of error was, I wasn’t scared. Not at all,” he wiped at his eyes, “because you were there with me. Going on that adventure with you, working alongside you again… it meant everything to me. And the more I think about it, it was the happiest I’d ever been.” He smiled softly. “I’m not half as good at anything as I am when I’m doing it next to you.”

“And here I am. I’ve outlived everyone I’ve ever loved.” Stretching out, he gazed up at the blue sky. “There was never enough time. I spent so long clinging to the past that I forgot to enjoy this life. You tried to help me. Tried to pull me kicking and screaming into the future. Everything you did was about trying to make things new again.”

A tear rolled down his cheek. “I know you’re angry with me. I tried to take your advice. I did the best I could but, I wasn’t strong enough.” He swallowed thickly. “I don’t know how to live in a world without you.”

He wiped at his face, gazing out across the water. “Even now, I don’t know how to say ‘goodbye’ to you. Should I tell you what you meant to me? I think you know. You teased me about it enough.” He laughed softly, lost in a memory. “No one had ever challenged me the way you did. I thought I hated it but, I’d never been surer of myself when we were on the same side. You made me believe in myself in a way that no one else could. Probably because I could trust you to tell me the truth, even when I didn’t want to hear it.”

“You never idolized me. You never took my word as gospel. You never shied away from poking fun at me and you never once gave up on me.” A tear rolled down his cheek as he took a deep breath. “I needed that. I needed you.”

His breath hitched, his vision blurring as forced himself to continue. “And now you’re gone and I can’t tell you the one thing that’s kept me going all these years. The one thing I could never tell Sam or Nat or Bucky. The one thing I could hardly tell myself.”

It was quiet, his voice carrying over the calm water. “I love you, Tony.”

 


End file.
